It should come as no surprise to those few of you who actually read what I write here that I changed my way of eating a while back. I’ve cut out pretty much all processed food from my diet. As much as possible, I eat locally raised pastured meat. I’ve also started eating eggs from a small local farm, which has surprised quite a few people. Also surprising to many who know me is that I’ve started eating salads. I drink coffee with cream, tea with milk and water, lots and lots of water. I try to buy raw milk whenever possible. Whenever I can’t get it raw, I at least try to get it from grass-fed cows who roam free on pasture. At the moment, my carbohydrate intake is extremely low and what I do get is usually in the form of nuts or the aforementioned salad. I plan on increasing my carbohydrate intake soon, but I’m going to do so slowly and I’m going to be very careful about how I do it. The net result of this is that I’ve lost 60 lb and 6 inches off my waistline since sometime late last year – probably around October or November. I feel better and stronger than I ever have before, which is a stark contrast to the last time I lost this much weight. I haven’t been sick in a long time, even when those in closest proximity to me for extended periods of time were suffering from pretty severe bouts of flu. I haven’t had any blood work done in recent times, but I never had any done before now. I plan on getting it checked relatively soon, but I’m not worried.

All this came about when I learned a few things. These things blew my mind, because they went against conventional wisdom. Mind you, I’ve never really been one to follow conventional wisdom blindly. I’ll try to list them all, but I may miss one or two. I’m only going to mention these on a high level. Things are much more complex, but for the most part, this is the important bit. Here we go:

• Eating fat does not make you fat. The human body can’t actually store dietary fat.
• Whole grains are no better for us than refined grains. Sprouting the grains makes some difference, but it’s not common practice.
• Eating cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol.
• Cholesterol is not bad for you. It’s basically the body’s fire department. Blaming it for heart disease is like blaming the fire department for setting a fire, just because they’re at the scene putting it out.
• There is absolutely no proof that saturated fat causes heart disease.
• The human brain is made of saturated fat. It needs saturated fat from food to operate properly and repair itself.
• Vegetarianism is damaging to our health and the environment.
• The statistics about how many people we could feed vs. how many cows on the same food assume grain feeding.
• The human body will try its damnedest to maintain a state called homeostasis, or staying the same. This is the main reason eat less/exercise more doesn’t work in the long-term. Of course, there are exceptions. Give the body less fuel, it will slow your metabolism and burn less fuel.

It’s led to some interesting times, especially living with someone who has been eating vegetarian or halal in varying degrees. Fortunately, she agrees with the simple natural food aspect. I even have a few friends who have decided to forgo as much processed food as possible for a month. Unfortunately, though I applaud their efforts, I believe they’re throwing out the baby with the bath water by also going vegan for this month. I have also run across many many fat phobic folks, which is not surprising, since I was once one of them. Of course, it’s not without its downsides. My levels of agitation are rising as I continue to hear the trite old phrases “artery clogging saturated fat” and “heart healthy whole grains” constantly being trotted out. Unfortunately, those using these supposed truisms have no idea how wrong they are. Two of these fat phobic individuals come to mind immediately – Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.

These two British chefs have a lot in common. They’re both incredibly passionate about what they do and the food they create. I know Ramsay’s no fan of Oliver, but I’m unsure of how Oliver feels about Ramsay. They’re both trying to get us back to eating good quality simple food and they’re trying to improve our health by doing so. Unfortunately, they’re working on the premise that the government food guidelines and the lipid/diet heart hypotheses are true. Now, I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay cook some amazing stuff (the most amazing as he likes to say – a lot) and it’s certainly not all low-fat. Take his scrambled eggs for example – plenty of butter and a spoon of crème fraîche to boot. Unfortunately, it seems that everything he teaches amateur cooks on his quest to “get Britain cooking again” revolves around these false mantras.

Jamie Oliver is also on a quest, and that quest is to completely overhaul the food we feed our kids at school. There’s no doubt that this is absolutely necessary. I have an 8-year-old and he goes to school. I get to see the kind of prepackaged processed junk they’re doling out to the kids in the name of health. Part of this laudable quest is a TV show about his progress at a school in West Virginia. The city this school is in was rated unhealthiest in America, so it’s a logical place to start. I watched the first couple of episodes, and I’ll probably keep watching it, just to see how it all pans out. I had high hopes up until he tried to shock the parents with what their kids were eating. Unfortunately, the chosen scapegoat was saturated fat – a necessary nutrient for growth and development.

I’ll do a follow-up on my thoughts of Jamie Oliver’s show, but at a later date. For now, I’ll just say that a change is definitely needed. We need to go back to eating real, wholesome food – the kind we used to eat before all the packaged junk and industrial vegetable oils. We also need to lose our fear of real food and natural fats. Our grandparents and great grandparents ate these foods and they were nowhere near as fat or unhealthy as we are today. Let’s go back to the way we were, back to reality, back to simplicity. Throw out the boxed mixes and frozen ready meals. Put some love into your food.

I’ll leave you with a quote (possibly) from Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. The current dietary guidelines are not working. The time for change is now. Let’s make sure we change enough.

I’ve been losing weight for a while now, as I’ve posted about a couple of times. Today was another landmark. For the last few years, I’ve been wearing the same size/style of jeans – Old Navy Loose 36×30. I typically wore these pretty low, beneath my belly. I’ve noticed over the last while that I could pull my jeans up higher and that I needed to cinch my belt tighter and tighter. I was also told that my butt was disappearing in the jeans and that the style was not flattering. That brings us to today.

We headed over to Old Navy in Roseville and I tried on a couple of different styles of jeans. The first style I grabbed was a boot cut, followed by a straight fit, both in a 34″ waist. As a backup, I grabbed the same style as always, but one size down, as with the others. First I tried on the straight fit, which fit pretty well. Next up was the boot cut, which fit even better. I emerged from the fitting room and asked my wife how they looked. She approved and so I was sold. The fact that they were on sale for $19 didn’t hurt either.

So there we have it, a new pair of jeans in a smaller size and a much more flattering style. This is the first of many indications that I’m shrinking around the middle. I’ll be sure to update with any other indicators, mostly because I enjoy bragging about it.

I’ve been updating my daily stats, menus and photos for a week on my tumblelog. I’ve been trying to keep the order the same – photo first, stats second. My main reason for doing it in this order is that I’m including the two most recent posts on this site in a sidebar widget. The main drawback to that is that I have to wait until I get dressed in order to publish my first update. If I get distracted, like I did yesterday, the photo update may not happen until quite late in the day. I was at work and the lighting was awful, so the photo turned out grainy and dark.

One of the motivations behind this is to be able to track what I’m eating and see what’s giving me the best results. I also want to see if there’s anything tripping me up. Hopefully it will inspire me to prepare more meals for myself on work days, since those days seem to cause the most issues. I’m also noticing that I need to stock up on beef and bacon.

I’ve decided I’m going to post daily status updates over on my tumblr site. These will include a daily weigh in, plus what I’ve eaten that day and a photo. I may at some point turn the photos into a time-lapse video, but I haven’t really gotten that far yet. Today was the first update and I’m going to try to keep updating for as long as I can. I’ll also be embedding these updates from tumblr on this site in a sidebar. That pretty much sums it up. Come back every day if you want to see what I’ve eaten and what I look like that day. I’m sure it will be thrilling.

Since I started third level education at 19, my chin hasn’t been completely uncovered for more than a few days at a time. The styles and amounts have varied. I used to sport a Van Dyke – fuzzy chin and upper lip connected together as one – but in more recent years the top lip has been exposed to the world and I now wear a goatee – fuzzy chin and a little bit beneath my lower lip. The Van Dyke returns from time to time, usually before I renew my driver’s license for some odd reason. I tend to get annoyed with it pretty quickly and revert to my regular style.

In recent times, I’ve read in a few places that the more manly style of facial hair is the solitary mustache. I can’t quite get with that. I “rocked the ‘stache” for a ’70s disco party in December, but it was purely for comedic effect. I went with a handlebar style that reached my chin. The recommended style, from what I can tell, is the “cop ‘stache” – full coverage on the upper lip and nothing else. This is a style my dad and uncles wore in the ’80s and it suited them just fine, but I think it looks absolutely ridiculous on my face.

To those who can pull it off, I say to go for it. I won’t be joining their ranks any time soon, partly because of the reason just mentioned and partly because I am not fond of the way my chin looks without a covering of hair. Perhaps that will change in time, but it’s unlikely for now.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I had finally had enough of my expanded waistline and decided that it was time to do something about it. I read about the slow carb diet and figured it was worth giving it a shot. I tried it for about 3 weeks and it worked quite well. My biggest problem was discipline and how to get something quick and easy for lunch. Pretty much everything that I don’t make myself contains bread or rice (and often comes with a side of a potato product). Mexican and Mexican style food (Chipotle, El Pollo Loco) is pretty easy to modify by replacing rice with beans and forgoing the tortillas. The biggest pitfall in this case is the chips, which I have a very hard time resisting. I lost a few pounds by doing this, but have decided to change tactics for a while. There’s a good chance that I’ll return to this in the future, but for now it was a successful experiment.